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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Bobby Womack: B. W. Goes C & W

BOBBY WOMACK: B. W. GOES C&W (1976)

1) Don't Make This The Last
Date For You And Me; 2) Behind Closed Doors; 3) Bouquet Of Roses; 4) Tired Of
Living In The Country; 5) Tarnished Rings; 6) Big Bayou; 7) Song Of The
Mockingbird; 8) I'd Be Ahead If I Could Quit While I'm Behind; 9) You; 10) I
Take It On Home.

The album that singlehandedly brought Bobby's
career to a standstill. At the height of the disco era, for an R&B artist
to come up with an album that consisted exclusively of covers of country songs
— well, you gotta give the man some
respect. After all those years and years of enduring compromises between the
will to experiment and commercial expectations (even saving up space on his own
records to explain the situation), Bobby suddenly comes up with this mighty
torpedo, blowing his ship to bits: he almost shoved the record down the throats
of United Artists executi­ves, but after it predictably bombed, they had no
choice but to let him go, and, from a business point of view, that was probably
the only reasonable solution.

What is really depressing about the situation
is that the circumstances surrounding this record are far more curious and
amusing than the record itself (for instance, when first asked to come up with
a suitable title, Bobby suggested Step
Aside Charley Pride, Give Another Nigger A Try). The actual songs recorded
for the album, ten of them, all covers of old country standards by Charlie
Rich, Eddy Arnold, Jimmy Newman, etc., might appeal to really big fans of the
genre, but it's not as if Bobby were doing anything surprising with them. The
material does get a little funkified and decorated with the appropriate
synthesizers and wah-wah guitars, typical of the mid-1970s, but other than
that, I am not even sure of what to say.

Ironically, the only song that Sam Cooke ever
wrote about the country was ʽTired Of Living In The Countryʼ ("gonna get
me a fine apartment, where the water runs hot and cold"), and, of course,
Bobby had to do that one as well, addicted as he was to having at least one Sam
cover per album (or, at least, per every couple of albums). It generates a
little more excitement than every­thing else, even ʽTarnished Ringsʼ where
Bobby drags out his own father, Friendly Womack, to sing a family duet (in
authentic country-western fashion, I guess).

It isn't as if Bobby couldn't have done anything with the songs — the man who could turn
ʽNo­body Knows Youʼ into a red-hot funk workout, and ʽSomething You've Gotʼ
into ska comedy, could probably come up with some hilarious transformations for
regular country stuff as well. But it seems as if he thought that the very
gesture was enough — that, perhaps, the very fact of em­barking on this
enterprise could turn him into the Ray Charles of 1976. And in thinking that,
he forgot to introduce any spice into
the arrangements: even the guitars are bland and mechanic throughout the
sessions. The singing tries to be passionate, but Bobby's singing is always
passio­nate: like with so many first-rate R&B / soul singers, there is abso­lu­tely
no telling when he is exactly «getting into it» and when he is just being
professional.

Even though the album only runs for less than
half an hour, it is still less than half an hour of excruciating boredom,
unless you worship the power of the waltz tempo, the slide guitar, and the
sentimental strings in all their doings. A ridiculous decision if there ever
was one (and, if I read Bobby's own memories of that correctly, drugs had some say at least in the matter). Thumbs
up for the audacity, perhaps, but the music is clearly thumbs down worthy, even if it
is a very dif­ferent thumbs-down in nature from all the usual thumbs down circa
1976-77.